Tawa's blog - dedicated to Christian apologetics, the explanation and defence of the Christian faith.

Thursday, January 26, 2017

Imaginative Apologetics Part IV - Smith, Vanhoozer, and The Place of Apologetic Imagination

Apologetics, Imagination, and Imaginative Apologetics

This is the 4th in
a series of blog posts covering a review article I wrote for Trinity Journal,[1]
a lengthy interaction with Imaginative
Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition, edited by
Andrew Davison.[2]

Previously in this
series of posts, I surveyed the terrain of historical and contemporary
Christian apologetics, and began a consideration of the place of imagination in
apologetics. I want to continue that examination with a focus upon the insights
of Kevin Vanhoozer and Jamie Smith. In subsequent posts, I will interact with
the various articles in Imaginative
Apologetics.

Situating Imagination

In the view of
Andrew Davison, editor of and contributor to Imaginative
Apologetics, too many current apologetic works are marked by a paucity
of imagination. Many apologetic works focus so strongly on rational arguments
and proofs that they become “cold or arid.” Thus, the goal of Imaginative Apologetics
is to make apologetics “a matter of wonder and desire,” a presentation of a
Christian truth “that is supremely attractive and engaging.”[3] Davison
and his contributors find some similarly-concerned company in the contemporary
scene of Christian philosophy and apologetics.

In Existential Reasons for
Belief in God, Clifford Williams argues that rational coherence and
evidences are not the only (or even the primary) means of positing the
significance and truthfulness of Christianity. Instead, Williams argues, one
needs to take note of the existential and emotional needs that exist, and seek
to appeal to the heart, not just the head.[4]

More prominently
and deeply, Calvin College’s James K. A. Smith continues his Cultural Liturgies
project with Imagining
the Kingdom, an appeal to readers to take note of the importance of both
imagination and embodiment.[5] Smith notes that human
beings are not merely minds, but are fully-embodied creatures; hence, our
Christian formation requires not just intellectual training, but also formation
of desire and imagination. Smith defines imagination as “a kind of faculty by which
we navigate and make sense of our world, but in ways and on a register that
flies below the radar of conscious reflection, and specifically ways that are
fundamentally aesthetic [bodily] in nature.”[6]
Imagination, for Smith, is not creative license or “making things up”; rather,
it is the means by which the body is trained to experience and encounter the
external world. Thus, “I am regularly ‘making sense’ of the world on a register
that has nothing to do with logic or . . . ‘intellectualism.’”[7]

What is needed in
Christian formation and education, then, are renewed “cultural liturgies” that
form the whole
person, not merely the mind. Hence the weakness of what Smith identifies as
“intellectualism”—strains of Christian thought (evident in Classical and Evidentialist
Apologetics) that emphasize knowing
the right thing, thinking
the right thing, and having rightly-ordered
minds. Christian educators must instead focus on what Pierre Bourdieu
labels habitus—“a
communal, collective disposition that gets inscribed in me.”[8] A habitus is developed,
at least initially, unconsciously and kinaesthetically (through the body, not
the mind). It is a social
construct: not something which we determine as an individual, but rather the
outcome of rituals (liturgies) into which we are initiated.

Smith’s desire to
cultivate “kingdom imagination” does not stem from an anti-intellectualism, or
a disdain for a reasonable faith. His concern, rather, is for a holistic
approach to Christian education and discipleship. Christian apologetics needs
to appeal not just
to the head, but also to the heart; not just to human reason, but also to
embodied human imagination.

Kevin Vanhoozer
similarly appeals for the application of imagination, not only in apologetics,
but also in hermeneutics and discipleship. For Vanhoozer, as for Smith,
Williams, and Davison, imagination is not “make-believe” or “pretending”;
rather, imagination is the unique human faculty which enables him to “keep the big biblical picture
(creation-fall-redemption-consummation) in mind as I attempt to live day by
day, minute by minute, as a follower of Jesus Christ who desires above all to
have one’s thought and life correspond to the gospel.” Discipleship, or
sanctification, requires Vanhoozer to “keep the gospel story (together with its
presuppositions and implications) in mind, and I have to connect my story to
that of Jesus.” And that process, Vanhoozer insists, requires the faculty of
imagination.[9]

Given the importance of imagination in
apologetics, how, then, do the authors of Imaginative
Apologetics set forth their case? I
will turn to that in my next post! Stay
tuned.

[4]
Clifford Williams, Existential
Reasons for Belief in God: A Defense of Desires and Emotions for Faith
(Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011). Williams identifies thirteen
existential needs that are experienced by all human beings—eight self-directed
needs (cosmic security, life after death, heaven, goodness, a larger life, to
be loved, meaning, to be forgiven) and five other-directed needs (to love, to
experience awe, delighting in goodness, being present, justice/fairness).
Williams' work on existential needs is a major strength of the book as a whole.
He notes that existential needs are widespread and closely inter-connected; the
notion of this 'constellation' of needs is a recurring theme throughout the
book. Critics of classical and evidential apologetics will generally be pleased
by Williams’ emphasis on nonrational or nonintellectual connections and
appeals. Nonetheless, they may find fault with Williams’ insistence that
humans’ existential needs can be used to construct a logical argument for the existence
of God. Despite the existential and emotional import of the book, Williams
could still be called a classical apologist!